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Jim Carroll

Music, Life and everything else

Doing the sums

George Michael has rescheduled his nixed Dublin show (the show, you will recall, was cancelled because of a truck crash on that notorious stretch of tarmac from Bucharest to Prague) with two Point shows on August 1 and 2. Even …

Jim Carroll

jimcarroll

Tue, Jul 3, 2007, 10:01

George Michael has rescheduled his nixed Dublin show (the show, you will recall, was cancelled because of a truck crash on that notorious stretch of tarmac from Bucharest to Prague) with two Point shows on August 1 and 2.

Even using the solar-powered On The Record calculator, it just doesn’t add up.

RDS: big patch of green in Dublin 4, capacity anything from 25,000 to 40,000 depending on where you stick the stage

The Point – former train-shed in Dublin 1, capacity up to 8,000 depending on how many seats you stick in (but it will be 20,000 when the builders finish in early 2009).

For two shows in the Point, you’ll jam in 16,000 punters maximum at the moment. Which means, George Michael’s second show in the RDS drew less than capacity. I mean, way less than capacity.

It all begs a couple of questions.

Just why did the promoters bother with the extra show in the first place when there’s really not that kind of demand for two nights of Michael at the RDS? Sure, he can do a couple of nights at the Point but so can Westlife.

Given the huge attempts to flog tickets for that second show (all those print ads and radio ads in the weeks before the shows), were porkies told about the real reason why the show was pulled? After all, the sold-out first show went off without a hitch. It would be nice to see the Ticketmaster manifest for that gig.